BGE said it plans to spend about $3 billion over the next five years on what it needs to serve its customers, saying that's impossible without a rate increase.

About 1.2 million customers depend on BGE for gas and electric service, including Bryan Price, who said he struggles to make ends meet every month.

"I mean the rates are already high enough. I don't know how they expect people to make it," Price said.

The Maryland Public Service Commission signed off on BGE's request to increase gas and electricity rates. According to the PSC, for the average customer, the increase amounts to about $3.33 a month for electricity and $2.70 for gas.

"That's probably reasonable. It's just a tough time to do it with the added federal taxes, gasoline prices are spiking. It's difficult but it's not unexpected," said Steve Flick, a BGE customer.

BGE officials said the rate hikes are all about improving and investing in infrastructure like pipe, wires, poles and transformers.

"It is a very complex system. It is a very infrastructure-heavy system, and we have to continue to invest in the system. Tax dollars don't go to this," BGE spokesman Rob Gould said.

BGE first filed the request in July, which was followed by public hearings and, ultimately, the PSC's decision to grant an increase less than what BGE requested -- about 65 percent of the $175 million request.

"It is a step in the right direction, but at the end of the day, it does fall short of what we need going forward both short- and long-term," Gould said.

Some of the money will go toward state and federal mandates for safety and reliability projects such as more aggressive tree-trimming that Gould said could help mitigate widespread outages like ones that affected hundreds of thousands of customers during the last summer's storms.

"This is something that we're going to be doing more regularly. We will be seeking more adjustments to the rates going forward because we have such a demand in terms of investments that we have to make," Gould said.

BGE officials point out that this is the second "electric distribution" rate increase in about two decades, the last of which took place in early 2010.

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